Helen Douglas

Love and Arms: Violence and Justification After Levinas Helen Douglas

In violently resisting unjust violence, one finds oneself ethically obliged to do the wrong thing. This is a difficult position to sustain. What does it mean that violence could be "justified"? What does such justification signify, and what does it accomplish? What underlies its conditions and limitations? Perhaps most importantly, is there any way to resist injustice effectively without feeding a cycle of violence? Love and Arms investigates the paradoxes of just war from the standpoint of a Canadian woman who was involved in the most violent era of South Africa's armed struggle against apartheid. Helen Douglas bases her analysis on a close reading of the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, for whom everything human begins from our unconditional responsibility for the suffering of others. Thread by thread, she patiently unpicks scenes of aggression and resistance, reweaving them into a brilliant and heartfelt analysis that deepens our understanding of both love and arms.